From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 3 December

Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh has finally resigned, transferring power to his vice president, Abed Rabbo Mansour al-Hadi, in the hope that this will help bring an end to the unrelenting mass street protests that have been going on now for the best part of a year.

However, there was virtually no public response in Yemen to the news of the president’s resignation. He was, after all, absent from the country for many months, yet everybody saw how the country continued to be run by the same elite that he represented. Yemenis understand full well that the purpose of the resignation is to enable to same elite to retain their control over the country’s economic and political affairs.

The ink had not dried on the resignation papers when gunmen (who included uniformed members of the security services) opened fire on protesters occupying ‘Change Square’ in Sana’a, the country’s capital, killing at least five people.

From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 3 December

Thousands of protesters stormed parliament on 16 November as part of a long-running campaign to oust the prime minister, Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah, a nephew of the Emir.

In actual fact, the storming of parliament was a response to the heavy-handed police crackdown on a demonstration calling for the dismissal of the prime minister. The Emir is threatening to throw the book at those involved in the action and about 25 people are known to have been arrested so far.

News, however, is hard to come by, as the imperialist media seem unconcerned about the fate of protesters in Kuwait.

From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 3 December

It has been admitted, not that it wasn’t already known, in the report (arranged by the king) of an independent commission into the uprising in Bahrain that the country’s security forces used disproportionate force and resorted to torture to extract forced confessions from detainees.

The report admitted that 35 people died during the protests, including five security personnel, while five detainees were tortured to death. Other detainees endured electric shocks and were beaten with rubber hoses and wires. Hundreds of people were also injured.

The purpose of this ‘independent’ report is to scapegoat “rogue elements” in respect of the violent abuses of human rights that were displayed for all to see on TV screens all over the world. This scapegoating will then allow the fascistic Bahraini monarchic government to present itself as a ‘respectable’ member of the ‘international community’ as it prepares aggression against Syria – supposedly in the interests of the ‘human rights’ that were so clearly flouted in Bahrain, with the assistance of that other bastion of Arab ‘democracy’ Saudi Arabia.

From the International Report delivered to the CPGB-ML’s central committee on 1 October

In Cairo, tens of thousands of demonstrators were involved in tearing down a concrete wall that had only just been built around the Israeli embassy. The wall was meant to protect the embassy from the fury of continuing demonstrations that have been taking place outside it since the killing of Egyptian military personnel in Sinai last month.

Not only did the protesters tear down the concrete wall, they also scaled the walls of the building to tear down the Israeli flag, broke into offices and tossed documents into the streets. The Egyptian army did intervene to remove protesters from the building, but they were not arrested.

On 10 September, however, in the early hours of the morning, there was a full-scale confrontation between protesters and the police, who were trying to disperse the demonstrators by the use of tear gas and rubber bullets.

Subsequently, Egypt’s ruling military council, made up entirely of Mubarak-appointed military personnel, has reimposed emergency laws curtailing freedom of the press, and have closed a TV station connected to Al Jazeera on the grounds that it had no licence.